


Who He Used To Be

by mellow_cello



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Good Severus Snape, Harry Potter Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Hermione and Ron Did Not Survive the War, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Mentee Harry Potter, Mentions of Suicidal Thoughts, Mentor Severus Snape, Non-Canonical Character Death, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Battle of Hogwarts, Severus Snape Has a Heart, Severus Snape Survives the War, Trauma, alternate personalities, mentions of self harm
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:14:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23439016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mellow_cello/pseuds/mellow_cello
Summary: Harry Potter gave and lost everything to the war, so when he disappears shortly after its conclusion it's unsurprising to most, including Severus Snape. Still, the world moves on and Severus mostly puts the boy-who-lived out of his mind until he finds himself face-to-face with eyes he'd recognize anywhere, attached to someone who doesn't remember him or his own real name. Unwillingly he finds himself the only one who might be able to help Harry Potter find some semblance of a life past the war, and maybe find a bit of his own as well.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 68





	Who He Used To Be

The fact that Severus Snape survived the war was nothing short of a miracle. He remembered lying in his own blood as Harry Potter crouched over him. He remembered giving the boy his memories and falling into cold darkness, believing that he would never wake. 

And then he did, weeks later in the hospital wing. 

It was indescribable how shocking the change from before and after the war was. 

In a daze, he took in the stories of all that had happened during what was becoming known as the Battle of Hogwarts. His face was blank as he listened to the names of those that had been killed; death eaters, colleagues, and students alike. It was only when no one was looking, much later into the night, that he allowed himself a moment to mourn, his head in his hands while a painful exhaustion came over him. He didn’t cry, but he did feel a bone-crushing grief of someone who had survived two wars. Some part of him wished he could muster up tears if they might take with them the grip the sorrow had on his chest, but he’d never show his pain. At some point he’d decided suffering through it in forced silence was better, no matter how much more painful it was than to curse and scream and sob. The next day he carried on with a mask of indifference, regardless of how it looked to others. 

And despite that he was acting cold about the end of the war, to his surprise it didn’t lead to suspicion he might’ve expected. It seemed the perception of him had changed as well since he’d been bitten by Nagini, and a few days after waking he learned that it was because of Harry Potter’s dedication to clearing his name, at least around Hogwarts. Several of his coworkers even stopped by to wish him a swift recovery (something that didn’t seem to be happening, the venom had done quite a bit of damage to him). 

Harry Potter was another matter entirely. Potter had apparently been the one to stabilize and bring Severus to the hospital wing, even talking Madame Pomfrey into saving his life. He’d already mourned the loss of Ron Weasley alongside his godfather, and Severus didn’t miss that Hermione Granger’s name was among the dead after the battle. Still, when he asked Minerva of how the boy was handling it, she said that she had yet to see him grieve or react in any strong way. That was quite obviously worrisome (and though Severus treated grief in much the same way, he wouldn’t expect such a thing out of the Golden Boy when he _had_ reacted to the death of his best friend and his godfather), but the truth was Snape wasn’t the person to comfort him, no matter if his perception of the boy had changed in the last few years, even more so after the events during the Battle of Hogwarts. Not to mention he was being kept strictly to the hospital wing as he recovered, and was struggling to even keep food down or walk properly, let alone provide some kind of emotional support to the boy-who-lived. 

What made his stay in the infirmary worse was the fact that he was surrounded by students. He knew that for the most part he should be upset that so many students were there in the first place, and a long-buried, decent part of himself was most certainly appalled that the war had come to this, but having to be gawked at while he was sick in a bin he’d become familiar with while the matron handed him potions and a glass of water was a stab through his pride. It certainly must’ve been odd to see a man that had, the month previous, been a symbol of fear and of darkness now needing help walking to the restroom. 

As his recovery dragged on, the hospital wing emptied. It wasn’t as if he missed the stares, but the flow of visitors also slowed, which meant the information he overheard was stifled as well. Minerva was his only consistent visitor, but as the new Headmistress conversations with her were brief, few, and far in between. He knew Harry Potter was heading a fight against the corrupted ministry, as well as tracking down the remaining death eaters, and he also aided several of the professors at Hogwarts in organizing a memorial for those lost in the battle. 

It seemed, for a while, that all the news he heard involved Harry Potter, but then it all came to a screeching halt, and he didn’t hear anything new regarding him. 

He hadn’t intentionally been listening to news about the boy-who-lived, but when the name suddenly stopped coming up when it had previously been one that couldn’t be removed from any conversation, he took notice. At first, he assumed that naturally came with the fact that he was receiving less news in general, and that things were settling in the aftermath of the second war. However, when he was finally released from Madam Pomfrey’s custody, it seemed Harry Potter had all but disappeared. 

Rumors were passed around but for the most part everyone assumed that, with the most pressing matters attended to, he had finally retreated to mourn and recuperate. 

Then rumors began to change shape as the anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts passed. And passed again. No one could find the boy-who-lived. Letters came back unopened, never reaching their destination. No one he might go to had heard a word. There was no record or trail to follow indicating he'd travelled anywhere. There was nothing. 

By the third year, there were only two prevailing rumors left and most of wizarding society had subscribed to one or the other; either that Harry Potter had moved far away and was planning to live out his life in quiet solitude, or he’d killed himself. 

Severus couldn’t say which he expected from the young wizard, and he also couldn’t say he would be surprised if either came up as true. 

When the third anniversary passed, he gave a single thought to the topic that was something along the lines of “what a shame” and washed his hands of the whole affair. He couldn’t hold any real malice towards him at this point, not that there had been _too_ much to begin with. The entire event had just been a sad show of how depraved the world could be to throw children into the front lines. Harry Potter had just been another casualty. 

It was a topic few people he knew liked to discuss anyway. Every once in a while, especially close to the anniversary, McGonagall would have tea with him and when the conversation would lapse, she might ask briefly his thoughts on if she’d failed the boy in some way. His response was never comforting, but she wasn’t speaking to him for comfort. If she wanted to be told she did everything she could and nothing was her fault, she would’ve talked to Professor Sprout. 

Then, with Severus having said what was on his mind, they would finish their evening in peace and go their separate ways, not bringing the subject up for another year or more. 

By the sixth anniversary, Harry Potter had become a name said rarely and only by those who never met him. Mostly he was a question on the minds of first years who were bursting with excitement at sharing teachers with _the_ boy-who-lived. They usually knew not to talk to Snape about it, but as far as he heard the headmistress was often asked to recount several stories at the beginning of the semester. Sometimes she seemed happy to reminisce, other times it seemed like it pained her. 

Still, the seventh anniversary was only a few months away and Christmas break was a welcome relief. Severus wasn’t quite sure what masochistic part of himself compelled him to keep teaching, and each year around this time he would swear he would resign, but somewhere through the summer the headmistress would talk him into staying. He’d sigh and concede that without Hogwarts, he likely would go months without speaking to anyone, but he couldn’t tell if that would really be such a bad thing. 

It was also enjoyable to have a reason to brew potions. Sure, he had his own experiments to keep him busy, but having the task of refilling the stock in the hospital wing or preparing a potion for a demonstration in class gave him a monotonous task that was almost therapeutic. The fact that he had run out of those tasks was what sent him out of the castle on the break, travelling so far south he almost reached the coast. 

He found that modern potion literature was lacking, and while he didn’t necessarily desire to add any of his own to remedy the situation, he was disappointed by how he had little to try in the last year. That left him with the only option of going to what he considered to be the best Potion shop in the country, hoping for a cure to his boredom. 

The shop itself was an odd one, taking the form of exactly what a muggle might call a witch’s cabin (and some seemed to believe it was). If approached from the outside, the house would be abandoned and one could walk through its dusty halls believing no one had been there in years. However, by using the floo network, one would enter the same house to find it often filled with dozens of witches and wizards. 

The inability to walk without having to shuffle awkwardly past some other patron was the only thing Severus hated about the place, though he at least could think that it meant his beloved craft wasn’t falling to disuse by any means. The air was filled with smoke and fumes from potions brewing, some of them the owner’s own experiments, some used as demonstrations for simple potions in order to sell ingredients to wide-eyed and inexperienced customers. 

A young worker behind a counter greeted him cheerily over the crowd, loudly asking if he had come up with a new recipe, eyes hungry for information. Rather than stopping, Severus waved a dismissive hand and made his way to the next room. 

The entrance had been filled with the most basic of potion ingredients and tools, often used to make quick brews, however the crowds thinned, and as he got deeper into the shop that wound rooms into infinity, he found the rarer and more unusual items he was seeking. 

Reaching the farthest room he dared, he breathed a sigh of relief with the noise and suffocating presence of large quantities of people far behind him, finding the room he’d chosen occupied by only two others who looked, like him, to be on their own. 

Some of the boxes of wares, stacked in no particular order, were labelled, though most were not. A handful of old, but rare, books were set on a shelf at the far wall, but he was here to see what odd ingredients were available for sale. 

His skilled eye glanced off several items. A few unlabelled ones he recognized and had used, but there were some he couldn’t place that required more thorough examination.

He perused the items slowly, content to quietly take his time, reading what information was available to him and working through the memories of many tomes he had in his head for old recipes and experiments that used, or _could have_ used, anything he saw. 

Leaning above an unlabelled, mostly empty box with six carefully tied locks of hair, he studied the strands closely. They certainly weren’t human, but he couldn’t quite place them. As he squinted at them, there seemed to be a mild shimmer, but he didn’t dare pick any up with his hands, knowing that such a thing might ruin any effect they had (and that there was likely some kind of protection over it to keep someone inexperienced from doing so)

“One of the people who work here said he thinks it’s Fae,” said a voice. Severus didn’t look up from his close analysis of the object, but he did give a sarcastic snort. 

“Unlikely.” He straightened up and used a hand to block some of the dim lighting in the room, seeing how it reacted to the increased darkness. “If it is, it’s lost an unusual amount of potency. I would be disappointed.”

With a sigh he moved to the next box. It was partially filled with claws of some kind, but as he began his inspection, he could still feel eyes on him. He attempted to ignore the person that seemed to be following him as he leaned in closer, but he couldn’t shake the odd feeling of having someone over his shoulder. 

“What do you think those are?” The person said when the silence loomed over them for several minutes. Severus huffed and crossed his arms. 

“I’m not certain,” he said, voice clipped and harsh. “Why don’t you go ask someone who works here?”

“Well you seemed to know what you were doing…” the stranger muttered disappointedly. 

“Well I’m not currently being paid to teach so I’m afraid you’ll have to get your knowledge from someone who is.” 

Turning to walk to the other side of the room, away from the one who had seen fit to bother him, he planned to give him hardly more than a glance on his way past, but the glance turned into a stare as he found himself standing mid-stride, looking at a face that turned his blood cold. 

In passing and to most, he wouldn’t be recognizable, but Severus would never miss those eyes. 

Harry Potter, a young adult now, stood looking back at him. He had previously had a look of amusement on his face as he’d spoken with the elder wizard, but as Severus stared at him, truthfully stunned (a feat that was rather difficult), his expression turned more nervous and confused. 

“Do I have something on my face?” He asked, laughing awkwardly. 

Severus opened his mouth, about to give some scathing remark, to demand what he was doing, how he could completely drop off the face of the planet only to casually approach him in some random potion shop on the other side of the country, when he stopped himself short. What was he playing at? 

“Have we met before?” The Potions Master asked slowly, gauging his reaction. That triggered another awkward laugh, but as he looked, it seemed much more nervous, almost frightened. 

“I don’t know, maybe?” he said, a slight tremor in his voice. He quickly forced a smile. “My name’s Jamison Evans, if that helps.”

Severus couldn’t stop his snort at the name. His mother’s maiden name and a name that meant “son of James”. It made for an awful alias, and if he hadn’t recognized his eyes, he would’ve been suspicious by this point. 

“Is something funny?” “Jamison” seemed rather uncertain of himself, and it struck Severus that there were several things incredibly odd about this situation, aside from the obvious. Had Harry been attempting to disappear, he could have easily slipped away upon seeing his old Potions professor. Snape likely wouldn’t have even noticed they’d been in the same room at any point. The alias was also a rather weak one, definitely one Harry would know Severus could see through. 

There appeared to be some kind of minor glamour over the younger wizard considering there was no scar on his forehead and a few changes to his facial structure, but the green eyes were the same, as were the unruly locks that he’d since grown out enough that he could pull most of it back into a low ponytail. This wasn’t a person that had gone into hiding and didn’t want to be found. 

“My name is Severus Snape,” he finally responded, holding out a hand, testing the waters of this strange development. 

“ _The_ Severus Snape?” Jamison exclaimed. For a moment, he even forgot to take the outstretched hand, but when he remembered he did so with excitement and enthusiasm. “The one who was a spy for Albus Dumbledore?” 

“Yes.” His words were clipped, and he grimaced at the fanfare at his supposed fame, though the irony of such a starstruck look on the face of the boy-who-lived wasn’t lost on him. 

“Sorry, sorry,” Jamison gave another awkward laugh, something he seemed especially good at. “You probably don’t like talking about it. I guess that explains where you saw me though. I was a student at Hogwarts.”

“Yes, you were.” The professor was now examining him with an intensity, trying to understand what he was attempting to do in this conversation. Was he trying to hint that he should be left alone? It didn’t seem that way by how he spoke.

Jamison didn’t immediately respond to the answer, shifting from foot to foot as though he had something on his mind, but after a moment, he leaned forward and spoke quietly, like they might be overheard by someone. 

“You were there, right?” He asked. “At the Battle of Hogwarts.”

“I was there for some of it.” He raised an eyebrow. “Why?”

“Was I there?”

Severus blinked at him for a moment, before his brows furrowed. 

“Yes, you were.”

“Which side was I on?”

Snape didn’t answer that question, just stared blankly at the man in front of him. He wanted to ask if this was a joke. Had Harry Potter disappeared for nearly seven years only to appear once more in a distant potion shop to confuse his old professor? He wanted to be angry, but he couldn’t quite settle on an emotion and seemed to be defaulting to nothing. 

“You should know that answer,” he finally stated. Jamison leaned back as though he had been burned, no longer able to look at the professor while a nervous smile played on his face.

“This may sound ridiculous…” he began, “but I don’t. I don’t remember any of it.”

“You don’t remember.” He paused. Several thoughts passed through his mind. Had a death eater that slipped through the cracks gotten to him? Unlikely. They wouldn’t have just erased his mind and let him go like nothing had happened. There was no revenge in that. “Do you know why?”

“Yes, actually. I mean, I know _who_ did it. A bit fuzzy on the _why_ , but it’s not a complete mystery at least.” His laughing was somewhat more hysterical than nervous at this point, but his smile fell a bit as he saw Severus’s raised eyebrow, waiting for further explanation. “Well, and I promise I’m not crazy, but it was me.”

“You erased your own-” Severus stopped, staring at him blankly while his mind processed the information he had been given. A part of him couldn’t help but want to laugh at this entire situation. The conflicting rumors that he’d either killed himself or hidden himself away were somehow both true. “What _do_ you remember?”

“Well…” Jamison leaned back, supporting himself on one of the stands as he thought over what he knew. “My name’s Jamison Evans, though I don’t actually remember that I was just told it by, uh, the _other_ me… I went to Hogwarts, and I graduated seven years ago…. That’s about the only specific things I have.”

“I see…” They trailed into silence, both wrapped in their own thoughts. Severus was tempted to correct him, to tell him who he _really_ was, but he hesitated. 

“You _did_ know me right?” Jamison asked slowly, grabbing the professor’s attention, who nodded in return. “And did I trust you?”

Severus couldn’t help but roll his eyes. “Yes, I think at some point you did.” Though the question of if that was wise was still available to debate.

“That works for me.” Jamison smiled broadly. “If you have time, could I show you something?”

The cynical part of him wanted to say he didn’t, but then it hit him once again that this was Harry Potter, the hero that hadn’t been seen for nearly seven years. He couldn’t walk away and pretend he hadn’t run into him without some of his questions answered. 

“Very well…” he muttered, nodding towards the door in a sign that he should lead the way to whatever it was he needed to share. Jamison wasted no time in navigating swiftly back through the store, glancing back every few moments in excitement at Severus to be certain he was following. 

He led him to the fireplace at the front of the building, the two waiting in line as Jamison began speaking quietly and quickly. 

“I was told not to go too far north.” Jamison glanced back at him. “He said- well, I guess I said- not to talk to someone if they recognized me but… Well he also told me if I couldn’t help it that I could- you’ll see, but he left some stuff. He said it would explain.”

“He said?” Snape watched him, trying to bring all the pieces together of this puzzling situation.

“He left notes all over the place,” Jamison explained, digging into the huge vase of floo powder and tossing it in, quickly muttering an address Severus didn’t catch. “Saying things like ‘don’t worry about the missing memories’ and ‘don’t go looking for the past’.” 

“And you listened to him?” Severus asked as they stepped through the green flames into a living room, finding himself standing in a rather small, disorderly apartment. Papers and old glasses filled with unfinished drinks were scattered across the coffee and dining table. Two throw blankets and mismatched pillows lay strewn over the sofa, angled towards a small television set. The dining table seemed to be working as a makeshift potion brewing station with several jars of ingredients set out next to a simple old pewter cauldron. A few thick books looked to have been knocked over as they lay scattered from next to the cauldron to the floor, and upon seeing this, Jamison huffed and hurried over. 

“Juju, every time you do this I need to scrub the cauldron again!” He shouted into it, and Severus followed the younger wizard into the home, glancing into the cauldron to see a black cat curled inside, completely ignoring his owner as he slept. 

“At least you learned to clean a contaminated cauldron,” the professor muttered while Jamison picked up the books and stacked them on the table again, leaving the cat as it was for now. 

“Probably learned that from you, right?” Jamison asked with a laugh. “And to answer your question, of course I didn’t listen. For one, I had to wonder if I really _did_ erase my own memories or if someone wanted me to think that. Then there was the fact that the curiosity was maddening- _is_ maddening. Here’s years of my life missing and I’m being told not to look into any of it. That most certainly wasn’t going to happen, and I guess I knew it too…”

Severus watched as he walked across the room to a small linen closet, but when he opened it, there were dozens of glass potion bottles stacked on the shelves. He estimated at least 50 at first glance, but upon closer examination found that the closet must have been spelled to be bigger as they went back much farther than it appeared to be capable of, rows upon rows of vials until they disappeared into the darkness of the closet. 

“So… here it all is,” Jamison gestured vaguely to the bottles. “It’s all the memories I guess. Not sure how he did it like this, but…”

Slowly, the professor stepped towards the closet. They each seemed empty at first, but up close he saw that they were actually filled with a thin mist. The labels on them were all vague, though he could pick out a few he thought he knew. “Tasks”, he guessed, meant the Triwizard Tournament. HG and RW he was almost certain of the contents. What puzzled him for a moment were several bottles simply titled “no name”, but it hit them when he counted seven that they were likely his encounters with the Dark Lord ( _he-who-must-not-be-named. Clever…_ ). 

Jamison was staring rather obviously, glancing between Severus and the potions, chewing on his thumb nail. 

“Do you know what any of it means?” He asked finally as the dark-clad man had stared at them for a while. 

“Some of them,” he admitted, arms crossed. “At least I can guess…”

Jamison waited for an explanation, but when none came, he slowly nodded. “Okay…” He muttered. 

“Is this reversible?” Severus finally asked, not looking over. He had a vague idea of how Harry might have done this, but it must have required quite a bit of trial and error. Still, he suspected having the memories on hand rather than destroyed or hidden meant it was possible to take the memories back, whether individually or all at once. 

“Definitely.” Reaching over, Jamison picked up a much smaller bottle at the far side of the lowest shelf. This one was the only unlabelled one, and the mist inside was colored an odd purple off the main clear ones. “I’ve done it before, a few times actually, but I always, well, undo it. I don’t know what he remembers that I don’t but he definitely wants to keep it forgotten.”

“Can I speak to him?” Severus asked, turning to Jamison, looking at the bottle curiously. Jamison shrugged. 

“Sure, but good luck. He’s pretty stubborn.” 

Severus couldn’t help but give another snort at such an incredibly true statement, and Jamison smirked slightly before uncorking the bottle and, with a nod to Severus, downed the potion. 

It wasn’t so much that he drank the mist within the bottle, but more breathed it in, an action that seemed a bit too learned to have been even one of the first times he’d done it. As he emptied the bottle, the ones within the closet emptied with it, rattling slightly, and with a slow exhale, he fell forwards, setting the bottle back down in the same motion, until he leaned against his legs, hair falling low over his face. 

A tense silence followed. For several moments, he just stood there folded in half, hands clasped together tightly, but then he slowly straightened up, breathing in as he did. There was a new tenseness to his shoulders, and he was looking suddenly very pained. As though he had aged twenty years. 

“Hello, professor,” Harry said, not yet opening his eyes. His voice was so cold and different from the person Severus had just been speaking to, he might’ve thought they were different people altogether if he hadn’t been watching him the entire time. Something like exhaustion seemed to take over every bit of his mannerisms. When he did finally open his eyes, they were dulled considerably. “How can I help you?”

“Potter,” he said slowly, though any dislike that had previously been soaked into the word each time he said it had faded over the seven years since they’d spoken last. “What is this?” 

The question wasn’t a very specific one, but both knew what he meant when he asked it. Harry took a deep breath, as though keeping himself together was rather difficult, and unclasped his hands. Every movement and action came slowly, every breath both careful and pained. 

“Are you looking for me to justify myself to you?” He asked coldly, eyes like daggers as they bore into Snape’s dark ones, unafraid but not for the sake of bravery, for the sake of having nothing to lose. “Are you looking for me to explain my actions and thoughts so you can attempt to talk me out of them? I will, but I want to be certain I understand your intentions.”

“I don’t know,” the elder wizard admitted, then added when Harry’s eyes narrowed at him, “Truthfully, I don’t. You’ve been missing for seven years. I would like some understanding on why.”

Harry stared at him with such incredible intensity that Severus actually felt intimidated, though it would never show on his face. Once again, he marvelled that this person was the same as “Jamison”, despite that he seemed nothing like him aside from looks. 

“Fine,” he said, stepping around the dining table and taking a seat. He didn’t offer his old professor one, but didn’t argue when the man sat anyway. “An explanation then. I did everything that I was supposed to do. I sacrificed, I _died_ , and I defeated Voldemort.” He ignored how Severus winced at the name. “I helped with the cleanup, used whatever power my name has to help the people that needed it, and then I left.

“I thought I’d live quietly, or at least recover some before I got bored of it, but-” His stony expression fell minutely to one that was almost fearful, gaze distant, looking past Severus at the closet of empty bottles. “It wasn’t quiet.” 

He swallowed thickly, his breathing hitching to a higher tempo, and he absently waved his wand. From the kitchen, Severus heard pots and pans being shuffled around, and the smell of coffee being started. Harry didn’t continue speaking, and the Potions Master got the sense he wanted to keep the silence until he got his cup of coffee, so he allowed the silence to continue while Harry stared at the closet where his memories had been stored a moment before. 

A few minutes later and two cups of coffee floated from the kitchen and landed in front of the two men, alongside cream and sugar, which Harry initially ignored in favor of taking a deep sip of the black coffee. He gave a low sigh, tension seeping slowly from his shoulders while the drink seemed to ground him, and he slowly began to add sugar and cream to the coffee. 

Severus didn’t touch the coffee offered to him at first as he watched the boy-who-lived recover himself from whatever had set him off. A weird thought crossed the professors mind as he realized without a doubt that this was a young man who had been traumatized. Of course he had, the second it crossed his mind he almost wanted to smack his forehead for his own stupidity at not thinking of it earlier. He’d seen his childhood during their occlumency lessons. He’d been thrown into a war in which he’d quite literally died and come back to life. He’d seen dozens murdered right in front of him, close friends that may as well have been family, a family he had never had. Severus would’ve been more shocked had he come out completely fine, and the fact that he held himself so firmly together at any point was a miracle. 

“It didn’t work out,” Harry finally continued, not a single waver in his voice. “I wanted to start over, but that wasn’t going to happen. So I spent about a year creating this system.” He gestured to the closet. “It took a lot of work, but it’s done, so now I can forget everything and go on to be happy.”

His face seemed to show he was the farthest one could be from “happy”, and Severus picked up his coffee and drank slowly, watching him in contemplation. 

“And you’re truly happy?” He asked skeptically, looking at his tired face, and Harry gave a hollow laugh. 

“Me? No, of course not.” He drank more of his coffee. “Jamison is though, which I guess is the closest I’ll get. I mean, he still gets some of my leftover...” He waved his hand vaguely. PTSD, Severus’s mind supplied, but Harry didn’t say it. “But he mostly doesn’t have nightmares. He can spend days idly doing very little. He knows how to function without some looming threat over him at all times. He’s virtually fine, at least compared to me.”

“And everyone who knew you, do you have some tragic idea that they don’t care about your absence?” 

“Well, you moved on quickly I’m sure.” He smirked, which Severus frowned at. “And no, I don’t imagine the rest are exactly happy about my disappearance. But I’m not going to apologize for this. I don’t think you know how incredibly liberating it is to be able to read on a quiet evening and not have a single bad thought cross my mind to set me into a panic.”

“Jamison, as you call him,” he sneered at the name, and Harry’s smirk only worsened, “wants to know about his past. He’s not happy being left in the dark.”

“Oh I know that. He’s taken back the memories more times than I can count, but he understands that whatever happened was bad, and that the him that remembers doesn’t want to. He can go on being curious for the rest of our life. I can’t go on with the memories.”

“You need therapy.”

The words came out so suddenly that it startled Severus for a moment. He thought that perhaps Harry was startled as well, but upon closer examination, his surprise seemed to be coming not from the statement, but that Severus was the one who pointed it out. 

“This is my therapy. And if you would like to claim that I should go on some long, arduous task of speaking to someone in order to face and then defeat my demons, then I’ll just say that I have earned the easy way out. I’ve given everything and more to this world, the very least it can give me is a bit of solace, even if it’s fabricated.”

He stood up, finishing his coffee in the same motion and walking to the sink in order to wash it, sighing softly as he stared at the dishes he hadn’t done. He shook his head mildly, glancing back and giving an empty smile to the potions master. 

“One thing that I can’t fault him for is never doing the dishes.” He began to do them one by one as he spoke over his shoulder. “I suppose he doesn’t remember our childhood, so he doesn’t have the same… reaction as I do. But I do wish he’d take care of this place a bit more.”

“You both talk about each other like you’re separate people,” Severus stated, taking a sip of his coffee.

“Oh we might as well be.” Harry didn’t turn around as he washed each one by hand without magic. Severus wondered for a moment if this was because he forgot he could use magic to do such a simple task, or if it was a way to keep himself busy. “I’m sure you noticed, we’re not exactly similar in any regard.”

He didn’t go further to explain himself, and Severus stared at him, trying to manage through the situation he found himself in. Should he try and convince Harry to keep his memories? Talk him into facing his pain? Should he walk away and let him go on as “Jamison”? Pretend he never saw him in the first place? Should he tell someone? 

“I hope you’ll keep my secret,” Harry stated while he dried his hands, almost as though he had read his old professor’s mind. “I suppose I couldn’t stop you even if I tried, but I didn’t want to leave the UK. Having to move out of the country would be a rather large inconvenience.”

He stared hard at Severus from the kitchen, his eyes stating that he would resent him greatly for pulling him out of his life, ignorant of all the hardships he’d faced, and forcing him to find somewhere else to live. 

“I don’t currently plan on going to anyone about this,” Severus said slowly. 

“Then what _do_ you plan on doing, Professor Snape?” Harry moved back into the living room and shuffled through papers on the table idly. The cat from the cauldron, “Juju” as he was called earlier, lifted his head out and blinked sleepily at the two wizards in the room. “What do you plan to do now that you know the big secret?”

The Potions Master thought honestly about this question, looking hard at the younger man who wasn’t returning his gaze, instead pulling out a blank piece of parchment and searching for ink and a quill while the cat chirped curiously at him and stretching on his way out of the cauldron. 

“Perhaps I’ll come speak with you again.” He wasn’t sure what compelled him to say such a thing. He was the least qualified person to try and help Harry Potter with his troubles, but the boy-who-lived looked up at him, surprise on his face, and then something colder. 

“To try and talk me out of this,” he stated in a clipped tone. “While a surprisingly noble sentiment coming from you, I’ll have to decline.” He turned back to his parchment, a pen in hand after giving up his search for a quill. 

“Very well, then I suppose I may speak with Minerva regarding what I’ve discovered.”

Harry’s pen jabbed into the paper harder than he intended as he sat up, a strangely twisted look on his face, one of anger and frustration, as well as exhaustion. 

“You mean to threaten me until I cave to your therapy.” Harry was resisting his upper lip as it tried to pull up into a snarl. 

“If you want to put it like that, yes.” Severus finished his coffee and eyed the wizard over his drink. 

Harry glared harshly at him, hand still poised to write, shaking slightly in frustration or anxiety, possibly both. He looked to be frozen in place as he stared, his breathing harsher than before, until Juju butt his head against his trembling hand and he remembered to blink, eyes turning down to the cat and softening immensely. He took a moment to scratch under his chin, his breathing slowing back to a more steady rhythm. 

“Fine.” The word was spat out coldly, and Harry began to write again. “If you’re going to hold that over me, then I’ll accept your visits. Happy?”

“Of course not.” 

A silence fell between them while Harry wrote quickly, nothing but the sound of his pen scratching on the parchment and Juju purring, laying partially on the page he was attempting to write on, which Harry didn’t stop him from doing. 

With finality, he stood straight up again and folded the paper firmly, tucking it into his front pocket. 

“Now, if you have nothing else to say…” He stepped back over to the closet and took up the potion bottle he’d drank from originally. 

“Nothing more.” Severus turned in his chair, hands braided on his lap mildly. “I’ll be seeing you soon then.”

“Sure.” Harry growled, taking out his wand and tapping it to the side of the glass three times. When he did, the glass seemed to vibrate, a high sound like a bell had been hit emanating from the surface. “Goodbye.”

Tipping his head back as though he were drinking from it, he pressed his lips to the opening and from them came a mist that filled the bottle again. As the bottle filled, so did the ones on the shelves next to him, an almost pained noise coming from his lungs as he seemed to be breathing into the bottle until he had no more breath to give. 

As Severus watched, he clung tightly to the vial until his knuckles were white before falling forward and catching himself on the door of the closet, rattling the shelves as he set it back in its place, gasping. 

He breathed deeply for a moment like he’d run a great distance while Severus watched on, his face giving nothing away. There was nothing but the sound of his breathing for a long while, before he sat up, face slightly flushed with exertion. 

“I take it things didn’t go too well,” he asked, “Jamison” once more. 

“Well? Of course not. I can’t say I had any idea of what to expect, however I can’t say I’m disappointed by the outcome.” Severus stood, taking his empty coffee cup to the sink and with a wave of his wand set the magic to clean it. Jamison followed, blinking down at the empty sink. 

“Nice, he cleaned the dishes…” He muttered approvingly, though ducked down when Snape glared at him. “So… the outcome?”

“I’ll be coming back, and I’ll be talking to you _and_ him about this,” Severus walked past him and gathered his things, really only his outer robes that had been left on the back of the chair. 

“Wait, he really agreed to that?” Jamison was still following him, staring at him while the man prepared to leave, before he seemed to remember something and dug through his pockets until he found the letter he himself had written only minutes before, reading through it quickly. “Oh wow, he doesn’t like you…”

“I’m not surprised. He required some persuading, but he _did_ agree.” Snape stopped at the fireplace, turning back to him. “I’ll need your address to use your Floo.”

“Oh!” Jamison jumped up, dropping the letter onto the table and turning, scouring around for paper and a pen. At first glance, he looked similar to his counterpart, the one that had the memories, who had, only a few minutes before, done the same search for something to write with and on, but their mannerisms were so completely different they may as well have been different people.

In many ways they were. 

“Here,” Jamison said, handing him a folded paper with an address scrawled on it. “And, uh… thank you.”

“For?” Severus asked as he pocketed the note, raising an eyebrow curiously at the younger wizard. 

“Talking to him, actually making any sort of progress with him…” Jamison shrugged sheepishly. “I mean, it’s all secrets and _mystery_ and… I can _feel_ how awful it must’ve been. Like there are so many things that are… leftover, I guess. And I can’t go anywhere or do much of anything because I’m actually scared of what would happen if I just accidentally ran into a bunch of people who knew me. I don’t know who I was, for all I know I could’ve done horrible stuff. I could’ve made a lot of enemies... I guess I got lucky with you…” Snape snorted, and Jamison gave a small smile. 

“I think he would disagree with you on that,” Severus stated, putting the outer robes on. After a moment of contemplation, he gave a small sigh and returned to the table, taking the paper and pen that both Harry and Jamison had used and writing his own note, handing it to Jamison on his way back to the fireplace. “If you need to contact me, my address. Don’t abuse or share this privilege.”

“Of course, sir!” Jamison said, surprise written on his face as he accepted the paper. “Thank you!”

“If only you showed me that respect when you were still at Hogwarts,” Severus grumbled, turning to the fireplace and taking a pinch of floo powder from what looked to be a salad bowl. 

“Is my name really Jamison Evans?” The younger wizard suddenly asked. When Severus looked back to him, he got the sense that the young man had received no answers yet despite his hopes and wanted at least one. 

“No, it isn’t,” Severus stated, turning back to the fireplace and tossing the powder in.

“What is it, then?” Jamison shifted from foot to foot, looking rather nervous. 

“I don’t think _he’d_ be very thrilled if I divulge that information to you,” Severus said, dusting his hands off. “Perhaps you’ll know who you used to be at some point, but for now _neither_ of you seem in quite the shape for that, and unfortunately for you I’m the only one who might be able to help. So for now, Jamison is good enough. Goodbye.”

“Goodbye…” Jamison looked rather dejected, but Snape couldn’t worry himself over the amnesiac’s feelings.

He had quite a lot to think over without that, and quite a lot of sleep to lose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... for anyone who has followed my other fanfic, you may have read my note that I was working on a secondary fic but I wasn't going to start posting it until I was finished? Well... with everything going on, I figured I might go back on that statement a bit and post the first chapter since it's been done for a while.
> 
> I do want to wait on chapter 2 until the rest of the story is mostly finished because I really want to be able to post these at specific intervals, but I'm really excited for this story.
> 
> And for people who have never read my monster of a fanfic (it's ridiculously long. This one will NOT be that long, I promise), welcome! It may be a bit before I get up the rest of it, but I'll likely post updates to this project via my tumblr (which is mellow-cello), and you're also welcome to message me there too! 
> 
> I love and appreciate every comment, so please leave me some thoughts if you can <3


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